Joe said,

I'm probably just being dense right now, but would an ellipses with "do too" receive a progressive interpretation? My initial thoughts are that "do too" would be used for a state (or a habitual action), rather than an event that is in progress. I think the headline writer is trying to match the semantics of a common use of the present tense in newspaper headlines, as in "US faces for sequestration while Chine prepares for war."

Joe said,

Sorry, just for clarification, I think the "do too" ellipses works with a stative verb like (face), "US faces financial diaster, and Britain does too," but not really for a verb like "prepare," "?China prepares for war, and Japan does too."

M.N. said,

In headlinese, something like "China prepares for war; Japan does too" sounds perfectly fine to me. (In non-headlinese, "China prepares for war and Japan does too" is still OK, but I find it hard to get a reading other than the one that says that preparing for war is a thing that China and Japan both do frequently or characteristically or whatever.)

Joe said,

As I said, my brain isn't really working right now, and I have a feeling I'm pursuing a wrong line of inquiry. But here does: I think the "does too" ellipses works for me as long it doesn't receive a progressive (or futurate) interpretation. If the present tense in the antecedent is either state or indicates or verges on past time (as it sometimes is in newspapers), then the "does too" works in the ellipses, as in this example from COCA, "I collapse into laughter, and Mac does too." So "China does too" works for me provided that is the use of the present tense that indicates past time. If it is an on-going activity that continues into the future (as I believe it is in this context), I have a harder time interpreting "does too" as a progressive. So I guess I'm suggesting that the writer's logic is that if the VP ellipses is a gerund-participle, the auxiliary is BE rather than DO. But maybe the simplest answer is the Mark gives above.

Adrian, it seems that a lot of people "gird for war" as a standard fixed phrase, though the OED's 7 definitions don't list an intransitive "gird for…" In the OED you gird yourself with something (a sword), gird your loins, gird (surround and besiege) a city, with all of them having something to do with binding or tying up as with a girdle/belt.

So "gird for" something has slipped away from the standard transitive usage, but is plenty common, and so it's a short hop to "girding for the state of the union".

David Morris said,

The Australian national anthem contains the line "Our home is girt by sea", which causes much discussion. Some people suggest or urge that it should be changed, but no-one can make any reasonable suggestion as to what.
In one lesson in South Korea, I had a few minutes left at the end, and it was near Australia Day, so I recited the national anthem and had them write it down. No-one wrote 'girt'. The best attempt was "Our home is great, you see".

The phrase that comes to mind when I hear "gird" outside a collocation with "loins" is the fixed phrase "girding for war". Which is probably what was being referenced in an original version of the headline, before it got incorrected.